Not surprisingly, given the enormous popularity of Bridgerton on Netflix, our numbers of visitors have skyrocketed in the last week. And while some are browsing the site, many seem driven to investigate issues of race in the Regency.
We have done a few posts on dispelling myths about the era in our Representing Regency series, including a post on Multi-racial people and Black Britons, but given these are short posts we wanted to support the interest with more content.
Our first post on Black Britons focused on people who achieved fame and success in and around the era. However, we thought it would be helpful to go into a bit more depth about the history of Black (particularly of African decent) people in England.
Recent archaeological DNA evidence suggests people of African heritage may have been in London as early as the Roman period. A critical mass was not achieved until the 1500s, with the population size continuing to grow throughout the centuries (Killingray, 2003). The first black community was established during the reign of Elizabeth I (Tudor), and the majority were free (Britain’s first black community in Elizabethan London – BBC News).
Many Black Britains originated from the African or Afro-Caribbean colonies or as part of the slave trade, and their treatment varied depending on their relationship to the people who brought them to the UK; some people were treated as slaves or objects, others were educated and empowered to form communities, and still others assimilated, marrying Anglo people and adopting the religion, customs, and culture of whites.
In the 18th century, the majority of Black Britons were waged and enslaved servants (Black Lives in Britain in the Late 18th Century | English Heritage (english-heritage.org.uk)) although, there were still populations that existed outside of servitude including in military service (some times pressed or bartered as refugees from the American revolution), within black enclaves, or fully assimilated into various towns, villages, and elsewhere in the UK. In London, where a concentration of Black Britons lived, there were gathering places and events for Black Britons to get together or mix among whites (Black Nightlife in 18thC London – Black British History – Black Presence).
By the 18th and 19th Century, Black women and men represented “a wide spectrum of social classes, experiences and places” in the UK (Marche). Marche goes on to emphasize that this meant, by in large, assimilation into white, Christian culture for people of color so that they were to become almost “undetectable” in the historic records precisely because they “desired it to be so” (Marche).
Its really important to understand that race as a social construct began to really take shape in the 18th century, but became more prominent in the social consciousness in the Victorian era (19th century) as “an ideology to justify slavery and conquest” (Human Origins: Scientific Racism in the Nineteenth Century (dailykos.com)). Science and invention was flourishing in the nineteenth century, but there were still limitations (class, gender, privelege, money, etc) on who had access to information and, consequently, the research would be favored according to the world views it supported (Human Origins: Scientific Racism in the Nineteenth Century (dailykos.com)). This was done with illustrations, exaggerations of differences, and other methods meant to exacerbate differences and create elevate the sense that race was real (Lindsfor). Its critical to understand that race and racism is entirely a human invention meant to support economic structures and people in power (Historical Foundations of Race | National Museum of African American History and Culture (si.edu)).
The development of race as a concept gave birth to racism that would become intimately entrenched in Western belief systems beginning in the 19th century. Although people in early 19th Century UK would have had a concept of “other”, the disparities between races would not have been as stark nor would the inequities have been institutionalized enough to represent the extreme barriers to access experienced by people of color today.
For those new to historical romance who are not familiar with the “historical accuracy” cudgel often used to try and silence new, non-white, cis, hetero, Christian stories, I have no doubt Bridgerton has sparked a discussion of how accurate it was to depict non-white aristocrats. Many scholars do believe, indeed, that Queen Charlotte was mixed race (Was Queen Charlotte England’s First Black Queen? (historyhustle.com)) and there are even some that suggest she wasn’t the first black or mixed race royal in English Monarchy history (Moorish Kings of Europe: King Charles Stuart II – The Black Boy King of England 1630 – 1685 – by – Oguejiofo Annu | Rasta Livewire (africaresource.com)) (Black Britain (realhistoryww.com)_I am not vouching for the accuracy of those last two articles, being non-peer reviewed but I present them because I think they make a compelling argument that not only was it possible for aristocrats in British history to be mixed race, but it was also likely.
I think the probability of having non-whites in the aristocracy in early 19th century UK was high and reject completely the label of Bridgerton’s representation as fantasy. In reality, its no more fantastical than the white washing of 19th Century UK in the myriad of other depictions that would perpetuate the lie that the UK used to be all white, Christian, cis and heterosexual. Without DNA testing old bones (some of which I imagine will be done at some point in time) its hard to say the heritage of the aristocracy. Furthermore, I think it does us well to remember that our shock or surprise or curiousity or rejection, or whatever emotion we feel with the representation in Bridgerton speaks more to the deliberate development of race and racism beginning in the 19th Century, and the need for those in positions of power/wealth to perpetuate that.
(2003) Black Baptists in Britain 1640–1950, Baptist Quarterly, 40:2, 69-89, DOI: 10.1080/0005576X.2003.12043504
Lindfors, B. (2001). The Making of Racist Stereotypes in 19th Century Britain (Microsoft Word – Hela boken (diva-portal.org)).
Marche, M (2019) Uncovering Black Women in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth Century Britain. Uncovering Black Women in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain | History – UCL – University College London
Popescu, A. (2015) Fashioning National Identify in 19th Century Britain.
Stepan, N (1982). The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain 1800-196), Springer.
Britain’s first black community in Elizabethan London – BBC News
Human Origins: Scientific Racism in the Nineteenth Century (dailykos.com)
Historical Foundations of Race | National Museum of African American History and Culture (si.edu)
BBC – History – British History in depth: The First Black Britons
“…..racism is entirely a human invention meant to support economic structures and people in power”. That may be so, and I am not smart enough to prove this, but I have always thought that racism, in part, is a result of evolution. When we were all living in caves and hunting Mastodons, anything (or anyone) who did not look like us was suspect–possibly an enemy or predator. So we stuck with our own kind. I am not disagreeing with any of the opinions stated in this article, but I am a history nerd and I feel that you really shouldn’t “change”/alter history to make everybody feel better. Contemporaries are fine. For instance, If they made another James Bond movie and wanted to cast Idris Elba as Bond, I would be all for it. Anything contemporary is up for grabs. And yes, I know that this is romance fiction, not “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire”, but to me it is still something that I am not totally comfortable with. And NO, I am not a racist. I did watch the series and enjoyed it and gave it high ratings and look forward to more seasons. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I think the argument presented by scholars on race (and I have read pretty broadly on this topic to say there is some consensus, or at least significant support) is that history has already been altered/changed to make people feel better (eg, the people able to offer financial support to scientific study, those writing the history books, etc). So I think its important to challenge our assumptions about what history is, because its likely based on other people’s (often biased) interpretations of facts and figures.
Take Regency romance, for instance. I see lots of authors take for granted phrases, words, and tropes as part of the Regency when in reality they were “gotcha” traps set up by Heyer that got treated as canonical and therefore rinsed and repeated in Regencies. These things are not questioned in the way other things (that are actually taken from history) are; women in sciences, courtesans marrying Dukes, there being people of color in Regency England…If we truly are about historical accuracy then we should not only be challenging the Heyerisms, but also the continuous representation that everyone has great teeth, that people smelled good, that London wasn’t a polluted mess, etc. I think its the picking and the choosing of what to beat the drum of historical accuracy about is wherein lies the controversy…and perhaps the problematic underbelly of the genre.
My point in the above article is that its important to challenge what we have assumed is the “correct history” because there is inherent bias, and scientific analysis and evidence bears this out. And not just about race, but also about a whole lot of isms (which is why I started the Representing Regency series).
I encourage all readers to examine their own bias and then challenge themselves to question what they know, whether its a belief or whether its true, and if you think its true how do you know so? And also to ask themselves what the stakes are. Because the stakes may point out the bias.
I do agree, in some respects, that as a species humans are especially good and terrible at tribalism and othering, but I don’t agree that race was necessarily the dividing line. In homogeneous communities, people still find ways to include/exclude…and those differences are also important only insomuch as they serve to include/exclude. I have seen enough good quality evidence to standby the belief that race is a construct made institutional in the 19th Century, and that by understanding this we may realize that all versions of history, in essence, serve to “make people feel better”. And, in many ways, every new Regency film or book is a contemporary version of history that tells us more about ourselves than about people in the past. And that, I think, is interesting and worthy of discussion.
I could say a lot more, but I will end with a thanks for reading and engaging.